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Protecting your computer against viruses and spam
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Any computer connected to the Internet is vulnerable to infection by viruses or other kinds of malware. You should make sure that your computer always has anti-virus software installed and running.
We recommend the free anti-virus package from AVG.
This includes a virus scanner which will scan your local hard drive, as well as scanning emails and files as you download them. AVG Free Edition is available here : http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5.
When you install AVG, you will see a dialogue box which lets you check for new updates; this connects back to the AVG website and downloads the latest virus definitions. It is vital that you do this regularly.
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Beware of spam email. Spam email ranges from the annoying to the obscene and malicous. Your anti-virus software should pick up any spam containing malicious attachments, but there are other types of spam which it will not pick up.
If you have a hosting or email account with us, you should consider asking us to activate SpamAssassin on that account. This scans your emails as they arrive on our server and performs a heuristic analysis of the email to see how likely it is to be spam.
For example, if it contains numerous references to Viagra then it will receive a high spam score. Emails receiving a score over a certain number are automatically discarded. We will be pleased to activate it for you - we don't do it without your permission, though.
No anti-spam software is perfect and there are other measures you should take. Spammers use automated software to scan websites for email addresses published on them. If you have a website with your email address published on it, you will certainly receive a large
amount of spam on that address.
One way round this is to obfuscate your address where it appears on the site - for example, publish it as a graphical .gif image so it can be read by humans but not by software. The downside of this is that you will not be able to have it displayed as a link which
people can click on to email you, but it is a good anti-spam measure.
You may receive spam emails containing tempting web links, or purporting to be from well-known banks, or eBay or PayPal. The links will be displayed looking as though they connect to the website of that company, but in fact, they do not.
If you follow the links you may be taken to a convincing forgery of that company's website
which invites you to enter account details, credit card numbers or other personal information.
Needless to say, you should avoid clicking on these links. Attempts to steal personal information in this manner are known as 'phishing'.
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